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the fact that Bill absent-mindedly sent in Captain Rowe's card instead of his own. When the very new Vice-Consul (whom Bill had assumed to be the Consul with whom he had had correspondence) finally put an end to the Comedy of Errors, we got on very well, and met the Consul, Mr. Clarence Macy, and had a discussion of the camel situation which led nowhere. 

We may have been disappointed at finding that elephants did not roam the streets of Bangkok. Karachi made up for it by the number of camels that stalk, high-headedly through the streets. Here, unlike any other place in the world, camels are used as draft animals, and pull rubber-wheeled carts through the town. We saw one caravan, of a dozen camels loaded with sacks, and many camels with enormous loads of hay on their backs, but the common method of transportation is these wooden carts, with automobile tires on the wheels, drawn by a camel. The beasts are unusually tall, and would make stunning Zoo animals, but there is so much surrah in the district that the veterinarian could not give us a certificate to take one out. Bands of bells around their knees add to the Oriental atmosphere of Karachi.

Bombay is a mid-Victorian city. Karachi is like picture-book India, with low, flat-roofed houses, some of them built of adobe. The city is completely isolated. Desert hems in three sides of it, and even encroaches on the town, as we went through sections that were nothing bit sand and a scrubby mesquite-like growth. The sea makes the fourth boundary, and it is 700 miles to the next city. 

We went out to the Zoo, but there was little there that we wanted. A pair of Indian badgers appealed to Bill, but the director, who is a horticulturalist, wanted Rupees 500 for the pair, which was simply silly, and we will have to live without Indian badgers. 

We had dinner on the ship. The agent came aboard, and Bill appealed to him for police protection for our animals. Natives come aboard in droves to look at our floating Zoo, and while they are not malicious, they insist on poking their faces up against the bars, which is frightening to the animals, and dangerous for the natives. When Bill made the rounds after dinner, he was delighted to find two crimson-be-turbaned Afghans with gleaming badges keeping all sight-seers at a safe distance. When Jennier and Davis came aboard about eleven, they had some difficulty persuading the guard that it was quite all right for them to look over the stock. 

August 24 - 

Nazirmohamed met us again, bright and early, and insisted on acting as guide for us, although he bores me to death. He talks too much, showing his betel stained teeth, spreads a continual grin over his pock-marked face, and constantly protests his superb honesty, and begs us to recommend him to animal dealers in the States. He brought us three pythons, two cobras - at 12 ruppees each, and accompanied by the statement that they were "fixed", that all available cobras indeed had their fangs drawn; some rock parrakeets, a hundred avadavits (small, strawberry-like finches), and three of the common Karachi crows, glossy black animals with grey necks.